As post apocalyptic movies seem to be the trend in Tinseltown these days, heartthrob Kevin Zegers (Mortal Instruments, Frozen) stars in this Canadian production of an Earth in severe frost condition, where most of the population have died due to the cold, common diseases or hunger. Most of those who survived build underground colonies where they try to preserve and grow their own supplies to support the remaining members of their group. When Sam’s (Zegers) colony receives a fragmented distress call from another colony, their leader Briggs (Lawrence Fishburne) assembles a three man team to respond to the call. When they arrive at their destination however, they make two startling discoveries — one that may be their salvation  and one that may endanger the lives of the survivors back home.

Patience is a virtue for a movie like The Colony. During the first twenty minutes of the movie, I must admit that resisted the temptation to stop the video from playing and cut my losses because of the long dialogues and pretty uneventful scenes intended to establish the direness of the situation of the new norm. However, when the story picks up,  it starts to get interesting and it progresses along in a relatively acceptable pace,

I liked that the film took the time to develop the characters, despite the fact that their fates grew more predictabile as the movie wore on.  The amount of time establishing the relationship of Sam and Briggs, while short, explained the motivations behind their actions and this made sense because the story mostly revolved around Sam. Zegers truly earned his keep in this movie and proved that he had acting chops as well as a pretty face. I think he can do more given more challenging materials in the future.

Another credit to the film is writer/director Jeff Renfroe’s ability to manage the suspenseful part of the movie with the amount of stunts, gunfights, chases, and general carnage albeit hampered by the massive amounts of snow.

However, I wasn’t a big fan of the graphics for this film, but considering its limited $16 million budget, it wasn’t too shabby.

All in all, there was nothing revolutionary about The Colony, nor was it unique from other post apocalyptic offerings. As a matter of fact, it was quite cliche, all things considered. But the film showcased a great cast of leading and supporting actors and they pulled their weight to make the film work. This just proves to show that sometimes, a big budget isn’t needed to make a good movie, and this was the case for this film. So yay, Canada! You nailed this one.